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Cake Keeps It Deadpan at Williamsburg Park

MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 2012|

Posted by: Joe Puglisi

Photos by Joe Puglisi

Fans of Cake are already familiar with their deadpan stage banter and frequent gifting of trees to fans with backyards. It was no surprise to see the usual staples of the Cake continuum in full force at their Williamsburg Park show. The Sacramento band has been making music for over 20 years, and although frontman John McCrea's grizzled beard is showing signs of grey, his wit doesn't seem to have aged a day. In between songs, McCrea touched on life-affirming subjects and bartered with the crowd to participate in sing-alongs.

The first half of the evening was largely populated with newer tunes off their recent LP Showroom Of Compassion, the latter, hitting all the discography hot points, including a twitchy Black Sabbath cover, and the big hits, "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" and show-closer "The Distance." The crowd didn't seem to mind the wingspan of albums and songs -- in fact, they seemed positively giddy to be outdoors, beer in hand, enjoying one of the 90s most recognizable modern-day holdouts.

The Cake tree giveaway took a nice chunk of time -- the band made the audience guess what kind of tree it was, and it wasn't obvious. In the end, it went to the enthusiastic man who correctly identified it as a plum tree. But for all of fifteen minutes, most of us were relegated to belly-laughing at McCrea's descriptions of audience members and their half-witted guesses. I could have enjoyed an entire evening comprised of nothing beside his hilarious deadpan remarks.

Check out some photos below and be sure to pick up Showroom of Compassion, the latest in the band's collection.

Also head here to see pictures of the trees given out all over the world.